


A Song and the Spider's Den

by SunlitRiddle



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Bard - Freeform, Body Horror, Captivity, D&D Character Backstory, Driders, Drow, Eilistraee - Freeform, Eye Horror, Gen, Lolth - Freeform, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Spiders, The Underdark (Forgotten Realms), Torture, Transformation, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29727318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlitRiddle/pseuds/SunlitRiddle
Summary: 20 Page Backstory™ for my D&D character.  I got an idea and had to write it downThe Zaulani family roams the outermost borders of drow territories, searching for those who have risked everything for a chance to live away from the snarled webs of Lolth.  Kelan finds one injured man who, when healed, alerts the Priestesses of Lolth of their heresy.  They have ways of punishing enemies of the Dark Mother.TW: body horror, physical torture, watching loved ones tortured.  Nothing too explicitly graphic or gorySquick warning: spiders, too many eyes, long limbs, spider mouthparts
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	A Song and the Spider's Den

The cavern ceiling twinkled with a thousand lichenlights. Grandmother said it looked like the night sky; but Kelan, only thirteen, young by any race’s ken and especially so for a drow, wouldn’t know. He had only ever stared up at the vaulted ceiling of the Underdark. If that’s what the night sky looked like, it was beautiful indeed.

“Kelan, dear, would you come here? I’d like to give you something,” his grandmother called. He didn’t reply, but the sound of his boots kicking scree down the slope would be enough to let her know he was on his way.

“Gran,” he said once he returned to their small camp, “my nameday isn’t for another few weeks. I can wait.”

“The rest of us can’t, child.” She smiled and embraced him. Into his hair, she asked, “What did you do with Meris’ lute?”

Kelan flushed and turned guilty eyes to the horned and bemused tiefling. “I’m sorry, Meris. It was sitting out and,” his fingers twitched, “I couldn’t help it. I only meant to borrow it, play for a little while.”

Meris laughed. “It’s ok, boyo. Just ask next time so I don’t think I left it back in the ‘Dark somewhere.”

“There shouldn’t be a next time,” Grandmother said, handing over the package. “We got you one of your own. Happy nameday, Star of my Sky.”

Kelan placed reverent fingers on his simple, exquisite instrument. “Mine,” he breathed. His eyes and hands were filled with the satiny smooth wood, slick and cool. He plucked a single string and let its warm note fill the waystop. He plucked another, slowly tightening the string until the two resonated somewhere deep in his chest.

Meris returned with Uncle Valdiin and the few hesitant refugees in their caravan. The circle around their campfire widened to make room for all. The hollow eyed refugees drifted into the ring, the firelight reflected in glassy stares. Valdiin took a seat on his mother’s left with Kelan on her right, eschewing the seats to sit at her knee. 

Uncle Valdiin patted his vest pocket, then trouser pockets with a puckered brow, then back to his vest, relaxed, and pulled out his fife. He played a note or two, quietly. Meris tuned his lute. Kelan listened with a sharp concentration. His arms barely reached around its belly, but he picked out the first few notes.

“You’ll grow into it,” his uncle said with a laugh. He played a few bars, then Meris joined in. Kelan played a couple hesitant notes of his own, then with confidence. The hair on his head prickled as the power rose in the music. The reticent refugees perked up, blinking, some tapping their fingers or toes in time. Grandmother thanked the Dark Maiden and blessed their meal before she brought her voice into the melody, a smoky alto. Valdiin and Meris followed her lead, and so too did Kelan. The four of them played long into the night. The refugees ate and were filled.

That night, as they settled into their bedrolls, Kelan heard Grandmother’s low voice speaking to her son, “The Lady sings to him in a way she doesn’t for me.”

Valdiin’s voice was hesitant, “Are you considering-”

“Priesthood? No, she sings to him differently. You felt the magic when he joined in.”

“I did.” He was quiet, thoughtful. “I only know a few small spells,” he mused, “just practical things. I can teach him those.”

“Yes, that will be enough. Lady willing, he’ll figure out the others.”

***

Kelan practiced his songs as they walked. In just a few days, they’d be at the tunnel that led to the surface. They’d pass the refugees to the next team, sell some wares, then move on. If he was lucky, he could steal a sight of the night sky. His fingers picked a chord and he smiled at the shiver of magic, a light that puffed like a breath in the cold. That light touched a dark cheekbone and silver cloakpin. He froze. Behind him, his uncle and the refugees marched past. He played that melody again, and the light puffed to life.

“What did you find, love,” Grandmother said, hand on his shoulder.

“A man.”

Grandmother’s fingers tightened.

“He’s so still, I almost didn’t see him.” He started towards him, but Grandmother’s grip was firm. “We should help him.”

She stood cold as a statue. “No,” she breathed. “Come now, we’re expected.”

Kelan pulled himself from her grip. “No! Gran, he’s hurt! He might be dying. You say to always help those in need, no matter the cost.”

“Sometimes, the cost is too great.” Her pale red eyes were distant, haunted.

“But, our sisters—” he glanced at the body, then amended “—brothers, we’ve always helped them before. Would the Dark Maiden turn aside someone asking for help?”

She lowered her head. “No, she would not. But—”

But Kelan was already trying to pull the man from the ditch. Valdiin and Meris helped carry him to their wagon. The pulled poultices and plasters, bandages and bowls within easy reach. Grandmother rolled up her sleeves and tied the silver Sword of Eilistraee to her belt. It dangled and swayed on its long chain as she worked. They peeled the stranger’s cloak away, revealing his pied tabard and armor. A guard. Grandmother only hesitated a heartbeat. 

“How can I help?” Kelan chirped.

Grandmother wiped dirt and blood away from his wounds. “Could you bring me fresh water?”

Off he bounced on his errand. He returned with a bowl that smelled strongly of minerals and the cold of the Underdark springs. Once delivered, he perched out of the way and quietly picked out a melody on his lute. Slowly at first, feeling out the notes, then it grew in volume. Her hand became steady, her patient’s breathing deeper.

***

The guard pulled his cloak closer and waved farewell at the fork in the path. The other refugees had already emerged through the gash in the ceiling, blinding bright. “Uncle, can I see the Surface?”

“No,” he said, fretting at his wares.

“Gran? Please? I want to see the stars.”

“Not tonight, love. Not tonight.”

“Meris, can you take me? You’ve been to the Surface.”

“Your grandmother said no, little one,” the tiefling said as he slid the halter off the ox. “We’ll see about next time.”

“No playing tonight,” Grandmother said in a strange, tight voice as she watched the path behind them. “Go directly to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Kelan bit his lip and stomped back to his bedroll. He’d wanted to hear the insects and frogs, feel the wind, see the sky. He curled into his bedroll with a huff.

***

He woke from his doze. He heard them first, a whisper of soft boots on stone; then a half dozen dark clad shadows pounced on his sleeping family. Terrified and confused, he dove beneath their wagon. Meris, first on his feet, fought with hissing steel and blinding fire against the armored soldiers. His shout arrested, a sword in his gut. He coughed, sneered, grabbed the offending opponent’s face. His eyes glowed, flames like blood dripped from his lips, and the soldier incinerated, bones silhouetted against the blinding flame. Meris, with a grim smile, dropped the blackened remains. “Who’s next?” he growled. 

The soldiers scattered.

The tiefling chuckled, collapsed to his knees, to the ground and lay in a shimmering black puddle, ripples reflecting the distant lichenlight as his lifeblood poured out. 

Kelan crawled out on his belly. Though he pressed an already soaked rag into his wounds, he knew Meris was already gone. He took the longsword from the limp grasp, heavy steel biting into his palms.

Valdiin and Grandmother fought back to back, she with silver spells and he with silver steel. They moved in concert, carving through the soldiers with practiced ease.

Then his uncle fell. Just a gurgle and Grandmother was alone. The soldier’s dark blade thrust hilt deep in his chest. 

Kelan recognized the soldier on the other end of the blade, the guard he’d begged Grandmother to heal. Tears were hot in his eyes. “We helped you,” he choked.

“You did,” the guard replied with a mocking nod. The sword was trembling in Kelan’s hands.

Grandmother fell to her knees, still raging against the soldiers binding her hands. The guard in house colors laughed and laughed. “We have something planned to express our gratitude. Would you care to see, little one? Do you want to live to see?”

Kelan couldn’t hold the sword any longer. It fell from numb fingers to clatter on the stones. 

“Good boy.”

***

Rough hands held him down and stripped his clothing away. He shivered in the cold and the rage and the shame. A hand came too close and he bit, his teeth his only weapon. They clenched a fistful of hair and craned his face up. A woman with eyes pale as milk sneered down at him.

“Feral little beast,” she said. “Let one male mature without the proper discipline, and this is what we get.” She thrust his head away. “Process him, shear him — just enough that he’ll always remember what he was and always feel the loss.”

They pressed him to the table, cold steel against his temple. Shear? He heard the glissando of blades scraping together, the snip, and his long hair was clipped free. Silver strands, fine as silk, foreign and severed fell. 

They set something cold on his shoulder. A knife? No. He felt eight tiny pinches, like little needles, like bug bites in his skin, then a searing pain as something unseen dug into the meat of his shoulder. He screamed. He couldn’t feel their rough hands anymore. He couldn’t feel their presence. He could only feel the pain down his arm and up his neck, into his jaw. He could only feel the burning as _it_ burrowed into him.

***

Low flames burned beneath the various cauldrons and alembics, flames of blue and yellow and red. Cobwebs hung like tapestries from the grated ceiling, shimmering like fine silken threads in the light. At the foot of the room, a pair of doors; at the head, an altar. Barred doors ringed the room, cells that stood waiting, empty, hungry save for two. Kelan pressed his forehead against the cold iron bars and ran his fingers over the stubble on his scalp. They’d left a crest down the center of his head untouched, still long and curling down his back. But why had they cut the rest away from his ears? To always remember what he _was_? He didn’t understand.

Kelan worried at the metal _thing_ that had burrowed into his shoulder. The pain was only a sharp whisper now, radiating from the now-warm metal. His grandmother was in the cell next to him, where they’d dumped her limp body. She hadn’t made a sound since and he’d been too afraid to call out. His fingers twitched, searched for a lute beneath them, but remained in silence.

***

Kelan roused from his thoughts. He flexed stiff joints — growing pains, Uncle called them — and limped to the front of his cell. There’d been a noise —

“You’re awake,” said the woman with pale eyes “I have a lesson for you.” The door to his grandmother’s cell creaked open. “A lesson and a promise.”

“Grandmother,” Kelan breathed as he pressed himself against the bars. She stumbled out, naked and limping, doubled over and wincing. Her own hair had been cropped away, leaving an ivory crest and a pale dusting of stubble against the dark skin of her scalp. “Gran?” 

Her eyebrows twitched in pain, but she didn’t respond. Fear cracked his voice. “Grandmother?”

Her eyelids twitched. Something about that raised hairs on his neck. Then a gash opened on her temple and he knew. Two pairs of pale red eyes stared out from her face, two he knew his whole life, and two on either side of her head, the very bone warped around the bulging orbs.

Four dark and shining cabochons sat upon her brow. No. His breath caught as they flashed in the shadow like the gleaming eyes of spiders in the dark. The guards threw her to the ground. Kelan saw the shining black spider on his grandmother’s shoulder, then reached to his own. He traced the eight spindly legs and knew what it was.

“You could have just let us live,” Grandmother hissed. She struggled to sit upright. “We exiled ourselves.”

The priestess clicked her tongue. “You know I couldn’t do that, Talaryn, not the way you left. You and your silver, traitorous tongue carved out my best and brightest.”

“They would have left, sister, even if I had done nothing. No matter how tightly you spin her web, there will be some who wriggle out. They’d already heard the Dark Maiden’s song.” She laughed through her pain, cursed eyes bright. “Like you did, all those years ago.”

“I heard nothing!” the priestess snarled, “I should have that tongue!” She took a shaking breath and schooled her features back to elegance. “Yes, those will be your last words, your last lies. It won’t just be your tongue that I take. I will take everything from you, punish you, chain you to the Dark _Mother_ and her antipathy. Then, I’ll take your best and brightest right out from under you, and there won’t be anything you can do to stop me.” She began intoning a prayer, partially in elvish, partially in a harsh language that burned Kelan’s ears.

The energy of the room changed, the atmosphere growing thick. The sallow-eyed priestess grabbed Kelan’s chin through the bars. “A lesson for heretics,” she hissed. “Watch, a promise of your future.”

His grandmother doubled over retching, choking on the thickness of the air. It looked like she was coughing up something. Something large, something dense. 

Two fangs peeked from between her lips, then pressed outward until she could only form a tight “O” around two massive jaws that split her mouth. Two leg-like appendages peeled away from the flesh of her cheeks, the line of her jaw. Her double pairs of eyes focused on the mandibles that twitched around what remained of her mouth. She began to scream then, and Kelan was screaming with her. 

The skin of her thighs rippled, dimpled, like fingers stretching soft leather. Too-many bones writhed and itched in her legs. The flesh of her thighs tore like old cloth. Six spindly legs unfolded. She crawled out of her own molted skin.

A single word began to gibber below his fear.

More spider than woman now, she lay dazed, breath wheezing. The carapace was still soft from the molt, dark amethyst like her skin, but a dull, bloodless shell. It was still his Grandmother’s face, though, behind the mandibles and fangs and eyes. The guards hooked their guisarmes around her shoulders and dragged her limp body back into the cell 

He screamed and he sobbed. He was blind to the world. His mind spun around one thought, one memory seared into his eyes. A rivulet of drool escaped his slack jaw.

The sallow eyed priestess crooned outside his cell, “Sooner or later, the same fate awaits you, boy, little traitor.”

***

Kelan’s arms and legs stretched out unnaturally long and thin, spindly — no, _lanky_ ; he refused to consider them spindly, not yet — grown longer by a foot if by an inch since his capture. Had Grandmother’s limbs been so long? He could only see how her face tore apart in his mind’s eye. His elbows touched the ground when he sat and he towered over the priestesses when he stood. So he spent most of his time sitting in the back of his cell and listened to his grandmother, or whoever was left inside the drider, growl inarticulate curses. His empty fingers twitched into chords, but there were no strings to strum. He passed the time between waking nightmare and the dreaming memory in silence.

The cells filled. Duergar, other drow, the occasional adventurous human or halfling. Two or three driders squatted in their dens, others held half-formed prisoners. 

His jaw ached. His brow ached.

He didn’t think about it.

***

He opened his eyes. Back to the wall, he saw the entire dome of his cell; left, right, and center. He reached up to touch his face and fingers jabbed into eyes bulging from his temples. He could feel them rock beneath the eyelids. He screamed and howled, tried to close his eyes, but still he _saw_ . Eyes shut, he _still_ saw the blurry silhouettes of priestesses at the altar or alembic. He raised his trembling fingers further and brushed four smooth cabochons, four dark _eyes_ like those upon his grandmother’s brow. Four dark eyes permanently prized open. He covered his face and whimpered into his palms.

One priestess with her nose near to the flame shushed him. No more than a nuisance. In his mind’s eye, the priestess’s hair caught from the flame, a brilliant flame kindled at her crown and incinerated her whole body. Tiefling eyes burning, the soldier in his merciless grip. A part of himself trembled, disgusted at the thought, the boy who hid beneath the wagon. Was that boy still alive inside him? 

His grandmother was staring at him again, he saw with those blurry, dark eyes upon his brow. It was his fault they were here, his fault Uncle Valdiin was dead, Meris. When he finally raised his eyes to hers, eight to eight, she smiled in sadistic satisfaction. Sooner or later, you’ll be just like me. Then she skittered back from the bars. He wrapped his overlong arms around himself and tried to sleep.

***

The priestesses were gone and Kelan hummed to himself, a nonsensical swirl of notes that went nowhere. Just like him. It took his mind off of the deep ache in his jaw and the teeth that had fallen out of grey gums. His thick tongue worried at the ones that remained. The drider with his grandmother’s face watched; or, rather, she listened. Her face softened, the gentle magic in the notes clearing her mind. There was sorrow in her pale red eyes as they flickered over his face, his eyes; sorrow and guilt and gentle appreciation. “Grandmother?” he slurred around loose teeth and numb lips. She blinked. The music faded and the mask of hate descended once again. She hissed, bared her fangs, and retreated.

Gorge rose in his throat. His tongue was too thick. No, not his tongue. He choked, gagged. He fell to his hands and knees retching. 

He felt them, barely, the two fangs that pressed against his half dead lip. His body heaved as though he could simply vomit them onto the floor. What few teeth remained clattered to the stone floor. When the jaws split his face and the two little legs peeled free from the dead flesh that had been his mouth, it was a relief . He was sobbing, gagging with revulsion, fingers hovering a scant hair’s breadth over what used to be his face. But at least it was over. For now. He could already feel the ache in his hips and legs. A promise: not yet, but soon.

Those eyes were upon him again. Neutral. Expectant.

“Grandmother?” He tried to say. All he could manage was a glottal “gaana’ah?” He choked back a sob. His mandibles curled close to his face and he curled into the corner of his cell.

***

They brought in a high elf who looked like she was made of gold. 

The priestesses preened and gloated, the jewel of their collection. They rushed her transformation like they did his Grandmother, not content to slowly infect her the way the others had been. Their prayers made the atmosphere thicken until his thighs itched. She screamed, each breath deeper in pitch as she grew, double, treble, a rising sun of gold and bronze held aloft on spindly legs. The prisoners pressed against their bars and craned their necks to watch. Even Kelan, who knew what he’d see, glanced up.

The high elf, what remained of her in that monstrous golden drider, larger even than the dark one Grandmother became, gasped for breath. They clipped her hair away from her ears but it left long down the center. Like his. 

Just enough that she’d always remember what she was and always feel the loss. 

He ran fingers over his silver stubble and clicked his mandibles in disgust. The guards looped ropes around her prone form and hoisted her through the gate in the ceiling.

The priestesses were growing bold and sloppy. Even Kelan knew this prisoner was a mistake. The others were old enemies or trespassers of the Underdark. Probably. That one? She was no adventurer, no more than he was. She would be missed.

When the priestesses had gone, he closed his eyes and let himself drift in the blurry shadow landscape. He hummed to himself, that wandering tune. Movement in the shadows caught his attention. He cracked open one eye. The prisoners had all returned to the bars of their cells to listen. Even the driders came. The golden drider’s huge blue eyes shone down from the grate above, like polished sapphires in a golden crown.

Kelan cleared his throat, neglected, hoarse from silence and screams. Their eyes were on him. He sang one experimental note, harsh and grating. Then it warmed. 

All eyes were on him.

He sang. 

There were no words to the song. Even if he could have forced his jaws into shapes lost to him, there were no words. He sang of freedom, of love, of things lost and found, of stars in the sky. Bittersweet notes rose from his soul, the song that had been within for so long, heard in the stones and water, and picked out on fife and lute. Eilistraee’s song, Grandmother called it. 

His voice grew stronger, a young tenor that filled the cells. It fought against the tarnish on his soul, vibrated against the stones and iron bars and alchemy glass. Clean, hot tears fell from his eyes. He was still cursed, still fated to become that hate-filled monster, but at least he had today. They all had today, even if they had nothing else.

His grandmother, eyes clear and bright, reached through the bars for him. He reached through his own bars. He thought the thick wall between them too wide, but their fingers touched, their metamorphosed limbs bringing them together. She gripped his hand tight. “Ka-ʟan” she forced through her throat.

He squeezed her fingers back. “Gaan,” he choked out, then closed his mandibles in shame. _Grandmother. I love you._

Eventually, hatred descended over her face and she withdrew her hand with a sneer. She hissed and skittered back into her hole. Kelan knelt there on the hard stone, feeling the despair rise, his hand laying empty outside the bars for a long, long time.

***

There was fighting in the hallway outside. The priestess said something, but he couldn’t make it out, the words distant, like a language he didn’t understand. Above, the Golden Drider sat on her matted web and watched with those blue eyes.

His shoulder ached beneath the artifact. A fierce pain knotted in the core of his hips, felt too many bones writhe beneath his skin. It wouldn’t be long before he joined the other driders.

The priestesses shouted, spells sang outside. Two adventurers in gleaming armor burst inside, a blazing sun above their heads. He pinched his eyes shut and turned his face deeper toward the shadow. 

There was a shout. “There she is!”

“By the gods, how do you know?”

“She’s my sister, how could I not know? Corellon have mercy, what have they done to you?”

A deep hiss came from the cavern above the ceiling, the massive cell matted with layers upon layers of thick webbing. The Golden Drider descended upon a rope of silk. Her half-shorn hair draped over a bare shoulder, her blue eyes polished cabochons in a lace mask.

“That’s not your sister anymore.”

“We have to get her out of here. There are healers who —”

“There’s no panacea for her, prince,” the sallow-eyed priestess said. “The only cure is death now. Take comfort, though.” He heard the gentle clink of metal on stone, small and dense like plates, like spider-legged artifacts. “You’ll be joining her soon enough.”

 _The only cure is death_. Kelan shuddered a sigh. 

Glass crashed and wood splintered as the table was thrown aside. One of them had an axe. Between the chanting and spell invocations, he heard a sound like someone was cleaving a head of cabbage. Over and over. Wet pulp on the stones, a crunch, gasping breath. The Golden Drider fell in a splatter of blood.

Their boots scuffed as they went cell by cell. He heard death. Another door. Gratitude. Another door and another, dripping blood. Then they came to his cell. Kelan squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the axe to fall.

“Wait,” rumbled a low voice. “I don’t sense any evil from him. It’s,” he considered, “around him, but _he_ is not.”

“He’s drow,” came the hissing reply. “You saw what they did to my sister.”

“Remember your oaths, Rothuil. Drow or no, _he_ is not evil.” A sword slammed back into a scabbard with an impatient huff. “Alright, then. Hello? Can you understand me?”

Kelan opened his outermost eye.

He knew what they saw, the nervously waving mandibles he couldn’t quite still, the polished cabochon eyes on his brow and those slashes that were closed against the light.

The elf spoke up, his shock eclipsing anger. “He’s just a boy!”

“Can you speak? What’s your name, son?” The deep voice came from the hulking half-orc in plate, resplendent even splattered in blood. His was the axe that dripped onto the floor. A shimmering puddle, ripples reflecting the distant lichenlight as lifeblood poured out...

“Son?”

Kelan blinked and came back to himself. He looked blankly at the half-orc. “What’s your name?” He gently repeated.

His mandibles wavered. Brow furrowed, he tried, “K- Ka—“ frustrated tears pricked his eyes. “Ka, kae, ke!” His throat squeezed. “Ke- Keʟan.” He pressed his hand over his chest. “Keʟan.” He tried to give his family name, but could only manage a hissing noise and some gurgles. He shook his head, and repeated simply, “Keʟan.” It was wrong, sounded wrong and felt wrong. _Kelan. My name is Kelan._ He curled his mandibles close to his face.

The half orc smiled. “I’m Shul West, priest of Kord. My friend here is Rothuil Silverflame, paladin of Corellon Larethian. We came down here to find his sister—“

Kelan’s eyes flickered to the bronze and gold striped sphere setting over the priest’s shoulder.

“Ah, I see.” 

“He knew!” Rothuil sputtered. “He knew who my sister was. He’s a part of it!”

Kelan shook his head vehemently. His thoughts raced. He caught the half-orc’s attention, gestured to his eyes and mandibles then turned and showed them the artifact half burrowed into his skin.

Shul‘s fingers hovered over the spider, then he pulled them away as though he’d been burned. “Well, that explains the evil around you,” he muttered.

Kelan gestured for them to follow and scrambled for the door. Rothuil went for his sword, but the cleric’s hand engulfed his. “Reign your zealotry for just one moment, friend. He _might_ be able to tell us more about what happened alive than dead.” 

“I’ll get my answers either way,” he muttered, but yielded.

But Kelan stood frozen in the doorway. The dark drider was only a few paces outside, limbs hacked away, offal unspooling around her. There was no veil of hatred over her eyes now. He stumbled forward and fell to his knees. With a shaking hand, he closed her eyes, the ivory fringe of her lashes just touching the dark cheek where he would leave a goodnight kiss...

The half-orc walked up behind him, a broad, looming presence in the corner of his eye. The blood on his axe — her blood — had congealed. Kelan gently but pointedly turned his grandmother’s shoulder until the artifact glimmered in the light. “Oh. Oh, son,” he rumbled.

The paladin inspected the other cells, turned over the other bodies. The spider artifact was the same each to each. He hesitated at the Golden Drider, hands clasping and unclasping. He put a trembling hand on her shoulder, then exposed the artifact to the light. “You were all victims.” His fingers touched the stubble where her hair was clipped back from her ears. He brushed the crest of long gold hair back from her face. His eyes focused on Kelan’s hair, shorn clear of his ears. “All of you.” 

Kelan smiled sadly. He gave his grandmother’s hand one final squeeze and stood. He towered over them both, head and shoulders taller than even the half-orc. He looked around the room to the fallen, those who suffered with him, those whose only respite from the chains of their mind was that night he sang. So he sang for them again, a dirge for the fallen, for peace, for freedom.

Eilistraee’s song. Would these holy men recognize it, like to like? No, the Lady was too small a goddess, and he was no priest to channel her divinity. He could only push back against the gloom with the song she carved deep in his soul.

Rothuil sucked in a breath as though waking from a dream. “You were right, Shul.” He looked at his sister, then at Grandmother, then Kelan. “I’m sorry, Kelan. I’m sorry.”

***

Far from the cramped cells that had been his whole world, they procured a dagger and a pair of trousers that barely covered his knees. They rolled him up into a blanket and set him by their fire with a hot mug in his hands. “It’s not a very interesting supper, I’ll admit,” Shul chuckled, “but at least it’s hot.”

It had been so long since he’d had proper food. He sniffed it. Boiled slivers of dried meat and scavenged vegetables, mushrooms, crumbled hardtack; it smelled like heaven. His stomach growled fiercely, but his mouth didn’t water, couldn’t water. He mashed it between his jaws, worked it back, swallowed. Nothing. Besides the smell, it could have been the same tasteless gruel the priestesses fed them.

He breathed the delicious scent. If he ate quickly enough, it was almost like tasting. Almost.

“What’s wrong?” Shul asked.

The paladin lowered the spoon from his mouth. “All that. He has no tongue.”

“That just occurred to you?”

“Of course not.”

Kelan looked up and half shrugged. 

“Let’s get that sorted first.” The paladin reached out as though to cup Kelan’s chin, hesitated at the mandibles, then decided instead to rest his hands on his shoulders. His fingers almost brushed the artifact’s sprawled limbs. “I was too late for my sister, but maybe,” he trailed off into a lilting prayer. A burst of power, clean as a cold rivulet washed through him. He shivered, the stubble on his scalp standing on end.

Rothuil stepped back, perturbed. “I don’t understand. That should have—”

“May I?” Shul asked and, when Kelan nodded and turned his shoulder to the light, rested a pair of spectacles on his nose. “Let’s see here.” His fingers gently probed the artifact. He rubbed his chin, furrowed his brow, and made all kinds of hums and haws. “A cleric of Pelor would be more appropriate,” he muttered half to himself.

“The Sun god? A priest of his would have no truck with _his_ kind.”

“Neither would you a few scant hours ago.” Shul stared at the paladin until he looked away. “I mean one of his priests,” the cleric continued. “This is an infection, a spiritual infection, and I would defer to a god of _healing_.” He bit his lip and muttered something guttural in a language Kelan did not understand. “But… Let me try something.” Another wave of power coursed through Kelan’s body. The aching in his legs lessened, almost ceased, but nothing more.

Shul frowned at the spider still resolutely burrowed into Kelan’s shoulder. “It should have come off in my hand.”

Kelan couldn’t tell them that it had helped, even if it hadn’t cured. The stagnant feeling in his core wasn’t quite so thick, the looming final step in the transformation was pushed back. Instead, he touched the two in turn, smiled, and inclined his head.

***

Kelan sat bolt upright in his bedroll, a shout first caught in his throat but grew to a bright crescendo.

“Kelan, son, what’s wrong?” Shul asked, still dressed for bed but with axe drawn and ready. “Rothuil?”

The paladin scanned the dark cavern. “I haven’t seen anything!”

Kelan trembled, a sick feeling in his belly. The nightmare, what _could_ have happened, played out in vivid detail in his mind’s eye. He curled up, arms around two blessedly normal legs. 

“Son, what happened?”

The words choked in his throat, impotent. Shul opened his arms. When Kelan didn’t recoil, he drew the boy into an embrace. Kelan’s shoulders tensed at first, then relaxed, and with it came tears. He sobbed into the cleric’s shirt until it was soaked, fingers clenched with biting desperation. 

“Let it go,” he rumbled. “You’re safe now.” He paid no mind to the mandibles and fangs pressed against his chest as he murmured soothing nothings and stroked his back.

“Is there anything we can do?” Rothuil murmured to himself. 

Shul spoke into the boy’s hair, “I cannot, not without study. Maybe not ever. I fear only time may grant him succor.”

***

They split ways; or, rather, Kelan peeled away from them to turn down a familiar path. Shul touched his arm, made him pause. “Are you going to be ok?”

Kelan smiled, brow quirked, and shrugged.

“If you say so. Listen, if you ever come to the surface, find a Temple to Kord and give them this,” he pressed a token into his palm. “Tell them I sent you. There has to be a way to get that thing off of you, and my brothers and sisters would be a good place to start. I’ll miss you, Kelan. I hope we cross paths again, under better circumstances next time.”

Kelan wanted so fiercely to thank him, but the words died in his throat. The best he could do was bow, then wave farewell until he and Rothuil disappeared around a bend in the tunnels.

Away from the cell — the “oculus to a temple of Lolth,” Rothuil called it — the deep ache in his legs lessened and, as he walked, abated. He thought about the last time he was on this path, remembered the slow crunch of hooves and wheels on the gravel, remembered Uncle Valdiin and Meris chatting at the head of the caravan. He remembered the refugees who drifted beside the wagons and understood their silence, their haunted eyes downcast. His eyes, too, were cast down. He stared at his bare feet and watched the well worn ruts in the road drift past as he walked. The world moved around him, past him, while he hung suspended, detached from time.

Their wagon was just another skeletal derelict, picked over and shoved off the path. The remains of their camp were gone. The only proof of their passing was a sooty shadow where Meris had clenched that guard’s face in a merciless hand, the guard immolating… Kelan closed his eyes and let himself drift in the blurry shadow landscape.

What had he expected to find?

Silver swords and silver spells. Uncle Valdiin. He wiped the tears from his cheek. His uncle was the lucky one. Kelan worried at the artifact buried in his shoulder. Valdiin could have been cursed, Meris too, infected and transformed like his grandmother.

He picked over the carcass of their possessions. There wasn’t much left. He found his oft mended shirt inside a shattered trunk. It still fit, save for the sleeves that barely covered his elbows. He found some threadbare rags and little else. Then, as he turned to leave, he saw it half smashed between some planks: his lute. Careful not to do any more damage, he pulled it free. The polished face was scratched, the strings severed, the belly ruptured. Still, he brushed his fingers over the wood with reverence. He examined the damage with a critical eye. If his uncle’s old trick worked, maybe...

Kelan hummed a note, another, as though tuning. The scratches faded away, leaving a satin finish. He smiled and repeated with more confidence. The strings uncoiled and stretched back into place. He curled fingers around the neck and quietly tuned the lute to his voice. A shiver of magic tickled his spine, raising hairs on his neck. The belly cracked and swelled, whole once again. Kelan smiled, his arms now reaching easily around the lute’s belly. He caressed the strings, tickling out a quiet chord that resonated somewhere deep in his chest. He could almost hear Meris play in harmony, Uncle Valdiin’s fife the melody, his Grandmother’s voice… the refugees...

 _Gran._ He looked at the gash in the ceiling, blinding bright. _I want to see the stars._

Kelan stood from the wreck and turned up the fork in the path. He strummed his lute as he walked and sang that wordless wandering tune, Eilistraee’s song, that nonsensical swirl of notes that had nowhere in particular to go, as he emerged from the Underdark and took his first steps on the Surface.

**Author's Note:**

> I read about the Fang of Lolth 3.5 prestige class ages ago, and a concept stuck in my head. Fast forward to last December where I reviewed the class and was filled with such an incandescent rage that I had to make a whole new cursed item that "fixed" it. 10 negative physical traits and the first one is "skin darkens"??? what the everliving fuuuuck is that supposed to mean??? Also, none of the traits have consequences or are linked to abilities? AND HAVE NO AFFECT ON GAMEPLAY? WEAK!
> 
> Also, I attempted to read a Drizzt novel, but it's not for me. I got most of my info from Forgotten Realms wiki, setting was inspired by the Black Jewels novels but with different curtains.


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